


Your Soulmate is a Cat?!

by CheyanneChika



Series: CheyanneChika's Sterek Week [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff and Angst, Implied Allison Argent/Scott McCall - Freeform, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Sterek Week, Sterek Week 2017, Sweet, Werecat Stiles, Werewolf Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 20:48:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12540896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheyanneChika/pseuds/CheyanneChika
Summary: Derek worries that his soulmate is a furry.Stiles is certain his soulmate hates him.Day Four: Soulmates





	Your Soulmate is a Cat?!

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to all the betas who worked on this...which there are a lot and I keep feeling like I'm forgetting so you know who you are and I love you.

“Your soulmate is a cat?” Laura starts laughing while Cora chokes on her cereal. Even his mother’s mouth is twitching a little bit.

“Maybe it’s someone playing a cat,” Derek tries.  “Like in a play.”

“Since when do you go to plays?” Cora asks, getting her breathing under control.

Derek looks worriedly down at his wrist again. The words, his soul words, appeared this morning, on his sixteenth birthday, at 7:04 AM.  But they aren’t words at all.  In capital letters, his wrist bears:

_MRRROW HISS_

It’s so stupid.  He vows to wear long sleeves to school for the rest of eternity.

“Derek’s gonna be a cat lady!” Laura cackles and Cora starts choking again.  “Wi-with twelve cats, all of whom meowed and hissed at him when they met!”

Derek also vows to remove at least one limb the next time he and Laura spar.

_…Two Years Later…_

Stiles is freaking out.  Today is his sixteenth birthday and he was born at 1:59 PM.  Of course, this had to be  a school day so he's spent every minute staring at the clock,  not paying even the slightest bit of attention to his teachers.

When the clock finally reaches 1:55, he raises his hand and asks to be excused.  Harris glowers, seems to debate saying no, but Stiles gives him his best I-have-ADHD-and-I-will-make-your-life-miserable look and Harris relents.

Stiles retreats to a restroom, rolls up the sleeve of his hoodie, and looks between the clock on his phone and his bared right wrist.  He is so excited he’s on the verge of giving himself a panic attack.  In a few minutes, he’ll know the first words of the person who is his other half, who will love him unconditionally.

Finally, finally, words scrawl themselves on his skin:

_Are you fucking kidding me?!_

Stiles’ lower lip trembles for a moment.  Right.  Because who on Earth would ever want to be soulmated to him?  To Spaz Stilinski?

He rolls his sleeve back down and goes back to class.

…

Scott tries to be encouraging when Stiles shows him after lacrosse practice.  They’re the last two in the locker room, having waited for everyone else to leave.  “Maybe she’s excited?  Maybe it’s a good thing.”

 _Maybe it’s not a she_ , Stiles doesn’t say.  “Maybe they know who I am and can’t stand me.”

“You don’t know that,” Scott says reassuringly.  His own words, _Can I borrow a pen?_ are nice, normal words for people who’ve never met.

“My soulmate hates me and I don’t even know who they are!” Stiles snaps.  “Look at the interrobang!”

“The what?” Scott yelps in confusion.

Stiles grimaces.  “The question-mark-exclamation-point thing.”

“That’s what it’s called?”

“Scott!”  Scott looks at Stiles like a kicked puppy and he wilts.  “Enough, I’m going to go hunting,” he says, not wanting to talk about this anymore.  “You want a ride home?  I’m heading to the Preserve.”

Scott nods.  “You want me to come with?”  Stiles looks at him with a raised eyebrow and Scott shrugs.  “Yeah yeah, I’ll scare away all the game with my great stomping feet.”

Stiles grins and leans against Scott as they walk out.

…

There is a knotted tree root that marks the place where Stiles stashes his clothes.  There are also spare clothes there in case something dumb happens because it has totally happened and he’s been without before.

He sniffs the air, already starting the beta-shift.  No one’s around.  A bird chirps overhead.  A rodent rustles some dead leaves.  He slips out of his hoodie and pulls off his shirts.  Pants and boxers quickly follow the shirts as a tail, sleek and white with black speckles, slithers down the leg of his loose jeans.  He shoves all of it under the roots and takes a deep breath, shifting the rest of the way into the body of a medium-sized, white cat with black spots that match his beta-form’s tail and ears. He yawns, stretching his jaw as his teeth turn small and sharp, before leaping into a pile of leaves and then up a tree after the bird.

The bird senses him and takes off.  A squirrel, on the other hand, does not, until Stiles is slinking along the branch.  It bolts, and Stiles races after it. He gives chase, leaping from branch to branch until the squirrel jumps onto one too flimsy for his weight and he hisses his displeasure before retreating.

Settled on a low branch, perfect for aerial attack, he listens for another creature to chase.  He hasn’t deliberately killed anything since eighth grade when the small opossum he’d been after turned out to have a massive mother who leapt to attack him.  He felt guilty for days, burying her a few hours later before the coyotes could get there.

Still, the thrill of the chase never left him, and his father failed to curb his instincts with the use of laser pointers; though that was more out of sheer embarrassment that, as a cat with a human mind, Stiles is still entranced by a red light on a wall, than out of how hilarious and fun it was for them both.

A mouse flickers into view below him and he’s out of his reverie and launching off the branch to land just behind the mouse.  It squeaks in surprise and takes off, making for the tall grass they could both see in a clearing up ahead.  Stiles would smile if he had lips as he dives headfirst after it.

The mouse finds a hole and vanishes a minute later.  Stiles sits, breathing hard, and looks around.  A cat’s sight is better designed for distance and motion  than for clarity but this place seems completely unfamiliar.  Great.  He must have chased that squirrel through the trees a lot further than he’d intended to.  In the trees, it’s easy to lose track of distances and he hadn’t noticed any unfamiliarity in the dense woods.  This clearing, however, is entirely unknown to his cat senses.  He debates shifting back to beta, which would allow him to see distances the way cats do, but without sacrificing the sharpness and focus of his human eyes.

But no.  Naked, with cat ears and a tail, is not something he wants happening in an unfamiliar clearing in the woods.  Also, beta-form meant the human thoughts would seep would back in.  As a cat, he doesn’t have to think about soulmates or assholes or asshole soulmates.  He can just chase wildlife.  At least until he gets lost.

He’s just about to try to retrace his path when a strange sensation has all his fur standing up on end.  He crouches low, ready to run.  He once came across coyotes and ended up stuck in the trees for hours until a howl split the warm, night air and they fled.  He doesn’t want a repeat of that any time soon.

This doesn’t feel like a coyote though.  He stays hidden in the grass, watching as two girls race past the clearing, their eyes glowing yellow.

Stiles lifts his head.  There are more weres in Beacon Hills?  He wishes their faces had come into focus but they were there and gone and the smell was too strange to recognize them by scent, even if he does know them.  He straightens and starts back the way he came, coincidentally in the wake of the girls.  Where are they off to?

They move soundlessly, he realizes, as he tries to listen for them.  He takes a cautious step out of the clearing.

Being wound too tight is clearly the reason he doesn’t sense the danger from behind.  A human hand grabs him by the scruff of his neck and then a girl, woman maybe, he doesn’t know, though he’s certain she is one of the two he saw moments ago, is holding him at eye level.  She’s smiling at him and says, “Well, aren’t you the cutest little thing?”

Stiles lashes out, swinging a paw, lightning fast.

But she’s somehow faster.  A swipe for her face hits nothing but air.  Not to be deterred, he swings his hindquarters up and nails the skin exposed by a low-cut tank top with the claws from his hind paws.  She shrieks and drops him. He turns to run but then the other girl has him around the middle and is holding him at arms’ length, facing his victim.

The world might be blurry in this form, but he can certainly see that the seven scratches--one claw must have missed--are closing as he watches.

“Vicious little thing,” she murmurs.  Her eyes flash golden again and she glares at him.  He starts to struggle, squirming in his captor’s grip.  She grunts but doesn’t let go.  “We should definitely give him to Derek.”

 _Who’s Derek?_ he worries.

“It’s a boy?” the one holding him asks and she sounds familiar, now that he’s thinking about it.

“Definitely a boy,” the woman in front of him replies.

Stiles would flush, were he human at the moment.  He hisses instead and twists his neck as far as he can to try and bite his captor’s wrist.  He knows he won’t reach, but the panicked yelp the girl, presumably also a were of some kind, lets out is satisfying.

It’s also the first good look he gets at her and, holy shit, it’s Cora Hale, his classmate.  He feels a brief respite.  He’s not alone.  Sure, Scott knows he’s a werecat and his mom was too, but it’s nice to know he isn’t the only one in town, let alone his own grade.  He looks back to the first girl, who he thinks is probably related to Cora in some way, and stops struggling.

The first girl eyes him suspiciously.  Cora, however, only seems relieved the cat she’s holding has relaxed.  She gingerly pulls him closer and she’s warm.  This close, she smells weird, like the forest and wet fur, but also like herself, a soft sense of pine and rosemary.

She shifts one hand slowly to slide down his spine and support his back in her arms.  “Come on,” she says eagerly.

The next three minutes are the scariest three minutes of Stiles’ entire life.  Trees seem to move out of the way rather than let Cora run into them.  The air ruffles his fur as it stands further and further on end, while they zip through the Preserve faster than he ever managed.

What are these two, were-cheetahs?

They pull to a stop in a clearing in front of a huge house.

Stiles’ body, from the neck down, is now completely locked up.  He can’t leave Cora’s easy grip on him if he tries.  He jerks his head around frantically, far more like a regular cat than a human masquerading as one.

Cora seems to notice his panic and starts petting him.  “Shhh, it’s okay.  We’re done running now.”  She looks at the other were.  “I think we scared him.”

The other girl is clearly leery of being attacked and doesn’t approach, though she does look sympathetic.  “Sorry, kitty.  But you’re gonna like Derek,” she pauses.  “Assuming he doesn’t kill us all for this.”

Stiles is liking this Derek person less and less.  Is he a were that eats cats?  Should Stiles start struggling again?

“Derrrrrr-reeeeeeeeeek!” the first girl calls at the house.

“What?” yells a voice from the upper floor.

“Come outside!”

“No.”

“Derek!!!”

Stiles expects a few moments to panic while Derek makes his way to the front door, but no.  A muscular man, a muscular and shirtless man, with dark hair and a face Stiles is sure is scowling, appears in a window.  Then he climbs out of that window, onto the roof, and then jumps down, landing before him and the two girls.

Laura grins wickedly and says, “Derek, I present your soulmate!”

Cora abruptly holds Stiles out with relish and Stiles can feel her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

Also, seriously?  Stiles has two lines of thought running over the top of each other.  The first: This is just cruel and unusual to do to someone who’s just gotten the worst possible question on his wrist.  The second: Does Cora know he’s a werecat? Is she fucking with him just because she can?

He focuses on the man, on Derek, and mrows at him in sympathy because, now that this guy is close, Stiles can see the hurt expression on his face that would probably match Stiles’ if he were in human form.

Cora jostles him slightly and he hisses angrily.  This was just plain mean, in his opinion.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Derek snaps at the girls.  Then he zeroes in on Stiles, who is suddenly frozen.  “Are you fucking kidding me?!” he snarls, as if it’s the cat’s fault.

Stiles loses his grip on the cat shape at the sound of those words.  Cora drops him as he shimmers and he lands hard on his tail, making him scream, somewhere between a cat’s howl and a human’s yell.

He rolls onto all fours, freeing his tail and then sits, hiding as much skin as he can while trying to adjust his vision by blinking rapidly.

The man in front of him, an insanely good-looking man, Stiles can now confirm, is, of course, Derek Hale, Cora’s brother and the hottest guy to graduate last year.  Stiles never spoke to him, but he’s seen a fair number of girls swoon over him.  There were a few guys swooning over him too.

“Stiles?!” Cora yells from behind him.

“Uh, yeah, hi, sorry, what are you?” he babbles, not taking his eyes off of Derek, who seems to be having the same issue.  Not waiting for an answer, he holds up his wrist to Derek.

Derek finally looks away from Stiles’ amber eyes to see the words in his own handwriting, _Are you fucking kidding me?!_ on the boy’s wrist.

Derek flips over his own wrist to show the block letters Stiles uses for sticky notes saying _MRRROW HISS_.  Stiles can’t help it.  He laughs.  It’s tired and hysterical.  Six whole hours of worrying about his soulmate and thinking he would be hated is exhausting, even if he has spent the last couple of hours as a cat and pointedly not thinking about it.

Derek stares at him hard, nostrils flaring as if he can smell all the emotions coming from Stiles in waves.  Maybe he can.  He offers up a small smile.  “I’m Stiles.  I’m also a werecat, if that wasn’t blatantly obvious.”

“Derek,” Derek replies.  “Werewolf.”

“Werewolf,” Stiles says, his heartbeat double-timing.  “Fantastic.  Sorry if I’m on your territory, wolves have a thing about territory, right?  I’m trying to remember my biology lessons from last year.  But I’m a cat anyway, so I’m totally not a threat and you don’t have to chase me off or eat me or anything, because—wow, please stop me from talking.”

There is smothered laughter behind them but Derek ignores it in favor of leaning in and inhaling.  Well, that certainly shuts Stiles up, though now he profoundly wants to scent mark and rub his cheeks all over those pecs.

There is more laughter and now there are also gagging sounds.  Derek huffs and stands, pulling Stiles to his feet.  “Would you like to come inside?”  He looks Stiles over unashamedly, even as pink covers the werecat’s face and chest and his tail whips back and forth indignantly.  “Maybe get dressed.”

“That would be nice, yes,” Stiles says in a rather high-pitched squeak.

Derek nods.  Then he leans back into Stiles’ space and hugs him.  “Werecat,” he murmurs with a rumble in his chest.

“Sourwolf,” Stiles retorts, raising one hand, other firmly protecting his junk from the non-soulmates in the clearing, and wraps it around Derek’s massive shoulders.

For just a minute, he’ll let his soulmate hold him.  A minute from now, he’ll be far more embarrassed about being naked with three clothed people around him.  A minute from now, he’ll go into that house and meet his soulmate’s family.  A minute from now, he’ll work out that, if Derek is a werewolf, Cora and the other girl probably are too and so is the rest of the family.

But that’s a minute from now.

**Author's Note:**

> I worked my ass off on this one, so I hope you guys like it!!!


End file.
